[208]. Arab. Mamarr al-Tujjár (passing-place of the traders) which Lane renders “A chamber within the place through which the merchants passed.” At the end of the tale (Night dcccxlv.) we find him living in a Khan and the Bresl. Edit. (see my terminal note) makes him dwell in a magazine (i.e. ground-floor store-room) of a ruined Khan.
[209]. The text is somewhat too concise and the meaning is that the fumes of the Hashish he had eaten (“his mind under the influence of hasheesh,” says Lane) suggested to him, etc.
[210]. Arab. “Mamrak” either a simple aperture in ceiling or roof for light and air or a more complicated affair of lattice-work and plaster; it is often octagonal and crowned with a little dome. Lane calls it “Memrak,” after the debased Cairene pronunciation, and shows its base in his sketch of a Ka’áh (M. E. Introduction).
[211]. Arab. “Kamar.” This is a practice especially amongst pilgrims. In Hindostan the girdle, usually a waist-shawl, is called Kammar-band our old “Cummerbund.” Easterns are too sensible not to protect the pit of the stomach, that great ganglionic centre, against sun, rain and wind, and now our soldiers in India wear flannel-belts on the march.
[212]. Arab. “Fa-immá ’alayhá wa-immá bihá,” i.e. whether (luck go) against it or (luck go) with it.
[213]. “O vilest of sinners!” alludes to the thief. “A general plunge into worldly pursuits and pleasures announced the end of the pilgrimage-ceremonies. All the devotees were now “whitewashed”—the book of their sins was a tabula rasa: too many of them lost no time in making a new departure down South and in opening a fresh account” (Pilgrimage iii. 365). I have noticed that my servant at Jeddah would carry a bottle of Raki, uncovered by a napkin, through the main streets.
[214]. The copper cucurbites in which Solomon imprisoned the rebellious Jinns, often alluded to in The Nights.
[215]. i.e. Son of the Chase: it is prob. a corruption of the Persian Kurnas, a pimp, a cuckold, and introduced by way of chaff, intelligible only to a select few “fast men.”
[216]. For the name see vol. i. [61], in the Tale of Ghánim bin ’Ayyúb where the Caliph’s concubine is also drugged by the Lady Zubaydah.
[217]. We should say, “What is this?” etc. The lines have occurred before so I quote Mr. Payne.